Another Star Wars story
Same for me with the Fox theme…A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away.
Thanks to horrendously long Monday shifts, I seem to miss all the fun.
I’m a second generation geek. I grew up with a father who watched Python every weekend on the local PBS station, read me “Lord of the Rings” as my bedtime stories, and who played wargames fanatically. These were single battle games that were a topical map with a hexagonal grid stamped on it. Dice were rolled and tiny cardboard squares were moved about, representing troop movements. If he were playing against someone, the moves would go back and forth through snail mail. His Battle of Saratoga lasted for two years in the late 70s. When I was 6, Dad took me to see “Monty Python and the Holy Grail” the day it opened in Cincinnati. I didn’t get a lot of it, but I remember the Knights Who Say Ni and thought the Bunny was way cool. When we left the theater, everyone got two coconuts as the promo gift. I drove my mother nuts that weekend, running around the house on my clopping horse.One Friday in May 1977, when I was 8 and finishing up second grade, my mother sent a note with me to school explaining I was to be excused early due to a dental appointment. I was bummed. I hated the dentist and still do to this day. Polishing my teeth is a torture for me. When Mom picked me up, I was surprised to see that she forgot the toothbrush and toothpaste for that last minute tidy-up before my appointment. As soon as we were in the car, she explained that Daddy decided we would fib to the school because I wasn’t going to the dentist but to a really neat movie. This new movie Star Wars was opening that day and we were going to the first showing. Now that was more like it.
When we got to the theater, there was one person there besides us. I had a small popcorn and a box of Junior Mints. Dad kept telling me to pace myself as he was not going to get up in the middle of the movie to get me more. The theater went dark, words started rolling across the screen (Episode IV? The hell? What happened to I-III?) and my mouth dropped open. I didn’t move for the entire movie. That world sucked me in completely from the get-go and I think that is the closest to rapture that I have ever experienced. When the movie was over, my popcorn was untouched and my Junior Mints were unopened. When we got home, I called my cool single aunt who always did stuff with me, and talked about that movie for at least an hour non-stop. She took me to see it Saturday. My uncle took me to see it Sunday.
And that’s how that entire summer progressed. Every weekend, I was in the theater multiple times, immersing myself in that world. We counted it one time, and I saw SW a total of 33 times that summer. I haven’t even tried to calculate the rereleases, laser disc, VHS, and DVD viewings. I won’t get into all the sadness over the reworking by Lucas, the pros and cons of Ewoks or Jar Jar Binks or any of that.
What I remember is a young girl who realized that there was literally a whole universe available to her with infinite possibilites she had never before imagined. To this day, every time I hear the 20th Century Fox theme at the start of a movie, I get a little shiver.
